GODT NYTT ÅR!


01.40: Vi har endelig fått bekreftelse på at Silje er i live. Selv om hun måtte kjøre hjem selv!

01.20: Silje dro sin vei, men ikke før vi hadde knust årets kunstverk. Silje brukte sin karakte-ki. Men først fikk Tor leke litt med den.

Vi fortsetter sånn halvveis utover kvelden, men nå som Silje har dratt er egentlig kvelden over. Men vi legger oss ikke før vi er sikre på at Silje har kommet trygt hjem.


00.45: Godt nytt år!


Vi har etablert at alkohol (eller mangelen på sådan) ikke har noen effekt på Siljes reaksjon på raketter. Hun endte opp ved pipa i år også:


Det er forøvrig tid for årets nyttårsforsetter!

Silje: Jeg skal gå på trening (aikido) to ganger i uken. Og jeg skal lese en bok på tysk! (Ikke en avansert bok, men en med vokabular på 400 ord).

Silje tror forøvrig at også 2014 kommer til å bli et bra år, for filmer som Days of Future Past og Mockingjay kommer ut.

Tor: Jeg skal gå på trening (aikido) to ganger i uken. Og bli flinkere til å prioritere fritiden min. Og i år skal jeg fikse den tingen som gjør det umulig å navigere Calcuttagutta 1. januar hvert år. Dammit. Og begynne å sykle til jobb. Og jeg skal lese Hobbiten på tysk. Og jeg skal søke FRINAT.

Karoline: Jeg må få gode karakterer, være sykt asosial (i første halvår skal folk tro at jeg har dødd -- de ...

After the glory that was last year's Gingerbread Death Star, we (Silje, Karoline, Tor & I) banded together again for another delicious and delightful Imperial end-of-year engineering and cookery project.

And as anyone who has ever made anything out of gingerbread will know:
The watchword is preparation.

Preparation, preparation, preparation.

We looked up the Imperial blueprints here, and Tor did some quick calculations (that went only slightly beyond the capabilities of the advanced version of the iphone calculating thingamajig). If you thought you would have no use for geometry after high school maths, you have clearly not been doing the right kind of Christmas baking.

Once the calculations were complete and the plans had been drawn up properly, we broke out the gingerbread dough (which, this year, we bought ready made because our inventive cooking went a little awry last year).

We made four big triangles. You can use the same pattern for all, but remember to invert it twice.

If you don't, you'll get two half Star Destroyers rather than a whole one. And that will not help you keep the Rebels in their place!

We also discovered that doing the cutting on the grease proof paper may be a good idea. Especially when your calculations and measurements have been so precise.

Which they have.


Here are some more pictures of Tor drawing, measuring and cutting. He did not want a repeat of the Death Star debacle. We suspect some physicist pride got hurt last year ...

Hvert år lager vi (som regel Karoline, Tor og jeg) en rekke forskjellige typer julekonfekt som vi gir bort til heldige utvalgte. Og hvert år bruker jeg noen timer på å finne frem oppskrifter. I år skal jeg være smart og skrive ned hva jeg gjør, slik at jeg slipper unna med halve arbeidet neste år.

Dere vil muligens merke at alle i bunn og grunn ser like ut før de blir pyntet. Det er fordi de består av marsipan med diverse som blir rullet til små kuler og dyppet i dronningsjokolade.


MARSIPANKULER MED COINTREAU OG SJOKOLADETREKK

400 g marsipan
Litt presset appelsinsaft (under 1/2 appelsin)
3 ss Cointreau
kokesjokolade
revet appelsinskall (vask appelsinen først)

Kna cointreau og litt appelsinsaft inn i marsipanen (nok til at den blir saftig, ikke soggy. Trill kuler. Smelt kokesjokolade og dypp kulene nedi. Gjør det raskt, men pass på at hele kulen blir dekt. Plassér på et brett til avkjøling. Riv appelsinskall og strø over. Sett kaldt.





MARSIPANKULER MED PISTASJ OG SJOKOLADETREKK

400 g marsipan
80 g pistasjnøtter uten salt
kokesjokolade

Hakk pistasjnøttene. Sett litt til side til pynt og kna resten inn i marsipanen. Trill kuler. Smelt kokesjokolade og dypp kulene nedi. Gjør det raskt, men pass på at hele kulen blir dekt. Plassér på et brett til avkjøling. Strø resten av de hakkede pistasjnøttene over. Sett kaldt.



MARSIPANKULER MED WHISKY OG (MEST) KAFFE
(tatt herfra, med modifikasjoner)

400 g marsipan
2ss whisky
2ts pulverkaffe
kokesjokolade
hvit sjokolade

Rør ut pulverkaffe i ...

I am primarily a student of literature, history, religion and suchlike -- the narratives we construct about ourselves and the world. I love my field(s). And the STEM fields are not among them.

But that does not mean they do not hold a particular sort of fascination. When I was 16 I went travelling through Eastern Europe. I was a bit of a pretentious teenager, and in my backpack I had a couple of books by Nietzsche and Wrinkles in Time by George Smoot and Keay Davidson. It was thrilling stuff; I still remember the feeling of finding out how things worked, realising that there were all these questions you could ask and reasonably expect answers to.

We have talked occasionally about the expanded ideal of Bildung, one in which the educated person, regardless of speciality, should know not only the basics of literature, history and social sciences, but also be able to talk sensibly about (and perhaps more importantly, be able to critically interact with claims about) the sciences.

On one level this should be obvious. A world in which scientists do not reflect on ethics is a horrible idea; and likewise a world in which their grasp of history is too rudimentary to engage with how their innovations may influence it. Conversely, we in the humanities cannot reasonably expect to be taken seriously in our attempts to bring our expertise to bear on the world if we cannot grasp the basics of central features of it? Technology is ...

Kjære Likestillingsminister,

Jeg føler at noen må ta seg på tak og forklare deg et eller annet, og siden jeg sitter her og er sint likevel kan jeg like godt gjøre det.

Grunnen til at jeg er sint er nemlig at du har dukket opp i nyhetene en del de siste par dagene. Forstå meg rett: Normalt ville dette vært fint; likestillingsministere bør i grunnen være mer i nyhetene enn de tradisjonelt har vært, så dette er på ingen måte en oppfordring til å skalke lukene og gjemme deg på det nye statsrådskontoret. Tvert imot.

Det handler heller om grunnen til at du har vært i nyhetene. Ut ifra uttalelsene dine slutter jeg meg til at du ikke helt skjønner hva du har gjort galt. Kanskje sitter du der og tror at et venstrevridd media er ute etter å ta deg, koste hva det koste vil. Jeg tenkte derfor at jeg skulle forklare hvordan ting henger sammen.

For det første: Er det helt greit at barnehagene leser homoeventyr for små barn?

Ja. Ja, det er det. Man må selvsagt anta at med "homoeventyr" mener du bøker på barnehagenivå hvor helten vinner en prins heller enn en prinsesse (eller heltinnen vinner en prinsesse, for den saks skyld).

Jeg vil faktisk gå så langt som til å si at det ikke bare er "helt greit"; det er absolutt på tide. Historiene man leser for barn i barnehagen er med på å gi barn de narrativene de bruker til å orientere seg i ...

Det faller meg generelt ikke naturlig å ha sterke meninger om store sportsarrangementer. Hvis det er noe du har sittet og ventet på, er dette øyeblikket. Følg med.

Russland skal arrangere OL i 2014. Gudene vet hvordan det gikk til (skjønt jeg har mine mistanker). Norge bør ikke delta.

En homofil 23-åring døde i mai etter å ha blitt torturert av vennene sine. Han ble slått, brutalt voldtatt med ølflasker og forsøkt påtent før de knuste hodet hans med en 20-kilos stein. Under en måned senere skjedde det igjen. Og igjen og igjen. Samtidig har Russlands Duma forbudt det de kaller "propaganda for utradisjonelle forhold", noe som gjør det ulovlig å fortelle noen under 18 år om homofili, og i praksis vil gjøre det umulig å kontre disse typene hat-kriminalitet på fornuftig vis. (PinkNews har laget en liste over 20 slike nyhetssaker fra Russland.)

Det er uklart om lovene som forbyr "homofil propaganda" vil gjelde utøvere og besøkende i forbindelse med lekene (Kremlin gir motstridende beskjeder, og sportsministeren gikk forleden ut og sa at det forventes at besøkende følger loven; Russland har allerede forbudt Pride House, som først ble introdusert i Vancouver) -- men det er virkelig ikke poenget. Om man arrangerte OL i Sør-Afrika under Apartheid, ville det da være greit, såfremt man ikke praktiserte Apartheid inne i OL-landsbyen? Var OL i Berlin akseptabelt, siden Jesse Owens fikk være med?

Stephen Fry, i et strålende åpent brev til David Cameron, går inn for en britisk boikott av lekene. Norge bør ...

He is not black and he is not a woman; but neither is he fucking twelve. (Although he is Twelve!) I am quite giddy with the news that Peter Capaldi is the new Doctor. (!!!!!! -- I feel this warrants multiple exclamation marks.)

Peter Capaldi is lovely. In so many ways. For the first time I find I am not even a little worried in the face of a new regeneration. There is no way this will not work. The voice, the face, the gangliness (it is now a word), the glorious accent (please God, let them keep it). The ability to cover both comedy and drama. I can't wait.

And before you ask, I am well aware that the Doctor cannot be a Malcolm Tucker clone. That would be Bad. In part because Doctor Who is, nominally at least, a children's show, and I doubt most people want 7-yearolds to be that ... creative in their use of language; but mainly because the Doctor is nothing like Tucker, apart from the devilishly clever plans and the uncanny ability to show up out of nowhere, of course. The Doctor is fundamentally an anarchist; Tucker is an authoritarian (and quite mean).

Still, let's take a moment to Marvel:



But this is also the man who played the Angel Islington in Neverwhere, and who was lovely in the beautiful Haunted Hogmanay (and everything else he has ever been in). And Capaldi is not new to Doctor Who, either. He was in "The ...

I die a little inside whenever one of my students (inevitably male) dismisses one of Jane Austen's novels as "girly literature", something for women to read, but not worth the time of Men.

Austen is subtle, she is funny, she is snide and she is sharp as a very sharp thing in her satire (not suffering fools without cutting them down in a less-than-apologetic manner), but because her books feature women and love and generally end in (happy) marriages, it cannot possibly be of any interest; it must be trivial, limited, hopelessly gendered and unable to speak to any universal human experience outside of the limited, female; it cannot be serious literature. Unlike, say, a Dublin-obsessed man who plays around with language (lots of love to Joyce).


In fact, the best description of Jane Austen's writing is probably that which she herself supplied, in Northanger Abbey, as a description of the novel as a form (defending them against those who dismissed them wholesale as trivial and silly):

only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language

I am not going to pretend love and marriage are not central to the plots of these novels: Austen was writing at a time when a woman's only way to avoid (well, comparative) poverty was finding ...

I have long been in favour of the analogy between text and textile, and I must admit that the more I encounter it the more I am fascinated by it. Perhaps because it combines two of my favourite things (Tor excluded -- although he is quite often covered in one or the other, so we can count him in).
Roland Barthes first put me onto it when he (in "Death of the Author") used the observation that "text" is etymologically related to "textile" (through the latin textere, to weave) as the foundation for the most effective description of intertextuality I know of:



Not only does this image do away with the idea that reading text is about drawing the veil (see?) aside and seeing what is behind and underneath it (the True meaning of the text, hidden by the clever author); it manages to conjure up the image of the woven cloth that not only requires the myriad intersecting threads of language in order to become what it is, but also the idea of the cloth that can be folded in any number of ways, and also (certainly if it is anywhere near my bedroom floor) simply scrunched up in new and unexpected ways. It is not only a good image of the text as we read it, but very neatly sets out the relationship between texts (where texts are not only literary texts or the written ...

I confess I was worried. I had imagined having to talk Silje off some ledge or other (especially after this horrendous promo video), but this was on the whole a pleasant experience. And if you do not leave the theatre loving Spock and Scotty even more, there is something wrong with you. The film has at least one major problem, however. And I am not entirely sure that it achieves what it sets out to do. (But seriously: Spock? So cool. Scotty? Rocks my world.)







I have long been a little wary of J. J. Abrams and his cronies. Part of the reason for this is his tendency to think of the box office rather than the integrity of the canon (I'll get back to that). There is also the fact that he seems to think Star Trek lends itself well to the action movie genre. He may not be entirely wrong; and while there are entirely too many action sequences in this film for my taste, I am willing to forgive it because the film still manages to retain the emphasis on the characters, which I associate with Star Trek. It also helps that they are visually very appealing (the action sequences; not the characters -- or, actually, both).

I think this ...